Exciting Announcement & TIFF 2011 Draw

2 September 2011One Comment

Before I get into my gripes about TIFFs ticket system, I wanted to share with everyone that I will be one of the Citizen Contributors to CBC.ca’s 2011 TIFF Coverage! This is a fantastic opprotunity for me to share my TIFF experiences with an even wider audience. I hope you’ll visit CBC.ca’s TIFF 2011 Coverage to read stories from all the Street Level Team!

My Advance Order Book

On with the show, though, as today was Advance Order Pickup/Exchange day!

One of the most stressful days of a Tiff-goers year is the Advance Order Draw day. For those of us who buy ticket packs in advance, it’s a make-or-break situation. The way it works is; TIFF puts all orders in boxes, on Draw Day they pick a random number, and start processing with that box.

This helps avoid the Madness that would be a first-come first-served situation (although that continues to be a serious concern on Single Ticket Day). Last year, I had amazing luck. This year, not as much. Especially with the scheduling, as TIFF Decided to have three of my top picks overlap on several nights.

Hundreds of TIFF’ers Queued Up This Morning.

For the draw, I was in Box 15, of 33 – and they started on box 20! As most of my picks are not blockbusters, I figured I’d get at least a few of my options. I was right, and walked away with all but one. However, there were still several films I wanted to see that I didn’t submit for that had gone “Off-Sale” (not sold out, just currently unavailable) before I was even able to try and exchange my vouchers. I got to the Box Office this morning at 6:30am, it openeds at 7am. I picked up my order with relative ease, before 7:30, and headed to the Exchange line. I was out of there at 9:00am.

Melancholia (Although it’s coming to the TIFF Lightbox in the fall, so it might not be a big loss).

Sleeping Beauty (Didn’t take Ahli’s advice on trying for this with the Advance Order, now it’s offsale. My B.)

However, Saturday is the true test, the fight to the death with MaxWeb, TIFF’s evil, terrible, no-good, very bad Ticketing System. Although TIFF releases additional seats for nearly every show on the day that Single Tickets go on sale, the online order system always crashes every year, for hours at a time. It’s not pleasant.

As my film festival schedule rounds up, I’ll post the fill thing here on the site. Until then! Good luck with the box office tomorrow, TIFF’ers, and I’ll see you at the Movies!